Federal Correctional Officers Set for 35% Base Pay Hike, But It Comes With a 5-Year Performance Review

This bill, officially titled the Federal Correctional Officer Paycheck Protection Act of 2026, is a straightforward attempt to address a long-standing issue in the Bureau of Prisons (BOP): recruitment and retention of federal correctional officers. What does it do? It mandates a 35 percent increase in the base pay for these officers and certain hourly BOP employees whose jobs involve direct inmate custody and supervision. This isn't just a bonus; this new rate replaces their existing General Schedule (GS) or Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) base pay and is treated as basic pay for everything else—meaning it boosts locality pay, overtime rates, and even retirement calculations (SEC. 2).

The 35% Raise: Who Gets It and How It Works

If you're a federal correctional officer, this is a significant financial upgrade. The bill defines a “Federal correctional officer” broadly: anyone whose duties primarily involve the custody, control, or supervision of inmates, or who routinely has direct inmate contact. This also potentially includes supervisory staff if their position classification aligns with these duties, giving the agency some flexibility in applying the raise (SEC. 2). For example, if an officer currently makes $50,000 in base pay, that number immediately jumps to $67,500, before locality adjustments are even factored in. A similar 35 percent increase is applied to certain hourly wage employees (Federal Wage System) who work in custody roles, provided they are grade 9 or below.

The Catch: A Five-Year Clock and Performance Targets

Here’s where the bill gets interesting and shows its policy teeth: the authority to grant this special pay rate expires in five years (SEC. 3). Why the time limit? Because this massive pay increase is tied to performance goals for the BOP. The Department of Justice Inspector General must review the law’s impact before the five years are up and report to Congress on two key metrics: 1) the extent to which the BOP has stopped using non-custodial staff (like teachers or clerical workers) to perform correctional officer duties, and 2) the reduction of excessive mandatory overtime for officers.

If the Inspector General determines the BOP has shown “measurable progress” in meeting those two goals—reducing the use of non-officers for officer duties and cutting mandatory overtime—the five-year expiration date is canceled, and the pay increase becomes permanent (SEC. 3). This effectively puts the BOP on notice: you get the funding for the pay raise, but you have to use it to fix the underlying staffing and operational issues that necessitated it in the first place. For the officers themselves, this creates a temporary uncertainty, as the significant pay bump is contingent on the agency’s future operational changes.

Real-World Impact and the Fine Print

For the officers, the benefit is immediate and substantial. This is designed to make the difficult, high-stress job of a federal correctional officer more competitive with other law enforcement jobs and hopefully stem the tide of experienced staff leaving the system. For taxpayers, this represents a significant increase in federal payroll costs, but the hope is that better staffing will lead to safer, more efficient facilities and reduce costly mandatory overtime in the long run.

One area of potential vagueness lies in the definition of who qualifies for the raise. The bill grants some leeway to include supervisory or administrative roles based on classification, which could lead to some employees getting the raise even if they don't have routine inmate contact (SEC. 2). However, the core intent is clear: reward the people doing the hard work in the cell blocks and use the increased pay as leverage to force necessary operational improvements within the Bureau of Prisons.